“A kind of superior journalism” is how art historian Kenneth Clark once thought of Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808, 1814, a brutally graphic painting of then-recent political executions. Some two centuries later, employing the latest in digital technologies, investigative artistsamong them Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Forensic Architecture, and Trevor Paglenhave fashioned themselves heirs to Goya’s repurposing of art: They seek to inform viewers of unjust and sometimes little-known current events.

Abu Hamdan gained attention last year with the audio work Saydnaya (the missing 19db), 2017, commissioned by the Thirteenth Sharjah Biennial and now reinstalled in a freestanding structure near the entrance to his solo exhibition “Earwitness Theatre.” Inside, as if occupying the beating heart of Abu Hamdan’s gallery/theater, we listen in pitchdarkness to mysterious sounds and